Our DSL router recently self destructed. You’d think replacing it would be relatively straightforward. A month or so later our new, upgraded, super-duper router is running and close to or below dial-up speeds. Verizon’s pathetic effort to resolve this issue is only matched by their bizarre business processes. Here are a few gems:

They send us not one but two routers. One wired, one wireless. Aside from the cost of shipping two routers and resulting customer confusion, you’d think they’d have some kind of common and single device standard to streamline support. Nope.

They want the old router back, or they are going to charge us. I dutifully pack the old fella up and ship it back. But wait! A week later the old router comes back home with a note. Seems it is "too old" for them to accept back. "Too old"? Nuts! It doesn’t even work.

Then the service starts running sloooooooow. Seems they downgraded our service for no apparent reason. Quick fix… but why? ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE STILL CHARGING US FOR THE PREMIUM SERVICE!

Seems that didn’t fix the connection speed anyway. Is still pathetically slow.

Every call to inquire about the status of our pathetic speed is greeted with the same mindless drivel. "Sir, I can’t do anything until you… Unplug from the wall… Sit and Wait…Plug back in… Open browser… Ahhhhh… I see you have an open ticket… Let me put you through to someone else…. Sir, I know you are frustrated, BUT …. Unplug from the wall… Sit and Wait…Plug back in… Open browser… Ahhhhh… I see you have an open ticket… Ahhhhh… The problem seems to be at our end… I’ve noted this… We’ll see if we can find the problem…" How do possibly expect to a) make customers happy, b) charge them for a service you are not delivering and, c) make money providing such repetitive and mindless service?

And now, to top it all off, even though we are sill at speeds well below our service level agreement they are claiming to have fixed the problem and there is nothing more they can do. There is something I can do and that is, not pay for the service!

Here’s the rub though – in this age of bountiful choice, it seems the only choice for consumer DSL is to wander into town and use the hyper fast FREE service and our local coffee shop.

6 Responses

By Ben Kepes on May 3rd, 2007 at 11:34 am

I for one am stoked that some things are the same stateside as downunder – crap service from telco call centres. Now there’s a real business idea in there…. use smart technology, international best price locations and the power of community to revolutionise the call centre industry….

I agree that it sucks big time.I recently moved to another apartment in the same complex. They keep setting a date to establish service and some a** keeps changing it.They are blaming it on their system, but the supervisor told me that someone actually needs to write a ticket and enter it in the system to cancel an order. So, today I have decided (after 2 weeks of no phone/cable/internet) to cancel my service if they do not want me as a customer. I think that is all I can do, right? Their websites do not let you contact the right person, this company has become too big….where is the SEC when you need it :)))

I have a great Verizon Sucks experience. I ordered Verizon Residential Fios fiber optic to the house service. Later I changed to a static ip address for some work purposes but this requires you to change to a business service. Ok I switch to business and then the static ip dosent work. Months of multi hour worthless tech support results in it finally working 7 months after change to Static then within a month they terminate my service. Seems that the bill i pay every month on time was for a residential service and the business side dosent see that ive been paying the entire time. Now we get credits on the bill and assurances bill will be taken care of but here we are nearly 1 year after activation and we get a bill saying we owe Verizon Business 600 dollars for a service that never worked correctly. 15 hours and manyu managers later I think my only recourse is small claims and cancelling my 280.00 per month Verizon services. As crediting the ammount ammount to me for a service that was never rendered is less important to the reps ive spoken to than me taking a 100,000.00 + lifetime of spending on Verizon services and speing it elswhere. No wonder MCI went belly up if this service is what they were handing out. There is so much more in the way we were treated and their unwillingness to understand a semi complex issue that I could write a book so my recommendation to anyone reading this is to not get Verizon anything under any circumstances.

Verizon customers I was an employee and Verizon sucks they have no respect for their employees and the company has no freaking idea what the heck they’re doing, the freaking supervisors are ignorant stupid people that have no idea what they’re doing but the company keeps them in their positions to harass their employees but when it comes to helping us they don’t know squat, Mr customer dont trust fucking Verizon for any services they outsource jobs out to Phillipines, Mexico, Argentina and also force people that are close to retirement to leave by harassing them until they can’t take it anymore and eventually leave..Verizon is a crappy employer that has no respect at all for their employees and they also want us to sell things to customers even if they don’t want it,and they want you to “assume” a sale so if the customer doesn’t pay attention and you read them the mandated script and they don’t say NO you assume they want it, and are expected to put it on the customers account shame on them your business practices suck.

my issuses aren’t as bad, however for the amount of money I pay each month, anything is something. Let’s forget that when I try to access verizon via Safari, i’m sent to their “spanish’ version and I can’t opt out. I then have to access the internet via firefox and it’s a non-issue. The worst part recently is their sneaky way of adding $ to the bill. My husband previewed an on demand movie selection one day. A morning or two later my 6 year old wanted to watch her show and was redirected to buying/renting the movie. This had happened once before and i chalked it up to her error. Now, I realize it’s no different than a pop-up on the computer, press the wrong button and you’re done. This time she said “mommy, I don’t know what i did” and saved me the rental charge. Wonder how many others have had this problem . . .

Please don\’t take this as being mean or critical. I would like to see the ride cadlener posted as before. We could look at a date and see the posted rides without clicking on the date. Probably just being too nitpicky here, but, you asked for comments! If you leave it the way it is, I\’ll get used to it, but that doesn\’t mean I\’ll like it! The site does look VERY good tho, very nice work, thank ya, thank ya vera much!